126

Two indices are provided, one for insect names and technical terms and one listing the species of host­plants included. I found it very convenient that for each moth species listed in the index that the primary locator pages are in bold, the page the species is found in the species key is indicated, and pages for all plates and text figures are given. Additionally, a square sym­bol precedes the page number on which each distribu­tion map for a given species is found. In the host-plant index, I found it very useful to have the family name provided for each species of plant listed.

In conclusion, I find this volume a very useful con­tribution to the taxonomic understanding of Palaearc­tic Sesiidae and of Lepidopterology in general. If a phylogenetic classification had been included with a presentation and discussion of supportive characters , the volum e would have been a standard for future works edited by any organization. The taxonomic com­pleteness and depth, along with the fine color and black-and-white line illustrations greatly overshadow the few errors and inconsistencies found in the text.

DAVID ADAMSKI, Systematic Entomology Labora­tory, USDA, c/o National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 20560-0168, USA (email: dadamski@sel.barc.usda.gov).

Journal oj the Lepidopteri sts Suciety 55(3). 2001. 120- l28

MARIPOSAS ARGE NTINAS: CUlA PRAc TICA E ILUSTRADA

PARA LA lDE NTIFICACION DE LAS PRf NCIPALES MARTPOSAS

DIUHNAS Y NOCTURNAS DE LA PROVINCIA DE B UEN OS

AIRES, by Andres E. Varga. 2000. Published by the author. 148 pp. Paper. ISBN: 987-43-1671-3. Approximately US $60. Price available from the author: museo@mariposasdelmundo.com; fax (54) (11 ) 4664-2108; mail address Calle Italia 650, San Miguel 1663, Pcia. Buenos Aires, Republica Argentina. (In Spanish. )

What do you know about the Southern Cone-the south-temperate zone comprising Chile, Argentina and Uruguay? (It is cone-shaped; look at a map. ) You probably have some notions of tango and gauchos and military dictatorships , but did you know that the re­gion embraces some of the greatest natural beauty on the planet, an incredible array of biomes, and a uniqu e flora and fauna? Long better-known to Europeans, the Southern Cone only recently has begun to attract sig­nificant eeo-tourism from the USA.

What do you know about the butterflies there? For most people, Lepidopterists or not, South America equals big, shimmering blue Morphos and gaudy swal-

JOURN AL OF THE LEPIDOPT E RISTS ' SOC:TETY

lowtails. But things change beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, and for most of us the Southern Cone is terra incognita. The biggest problem has been the lack of a field guide or faunistic treatment for any of the countries. Here is a paradox. All three countries have strong entomological traditions going back to the mid­dle of the nineteenth century, with indigenous journals and abundant Lepidopterologicalliterature-but until very recently, nothing one can actually use afi eld. There are taxonomic catalogues of all three faunas. They are antiquated, not very accessible, and typically not illustrated. Uruguay has the least interesting fauna. The country is small, nearly Bat, and mostly agricultur­alized. Virtually everything found there occurs in Ar­gentina too.

The first brcakthroughs to a popular fi eld guide occurred in Chile . ButterBy studies in Chile were dominated for half a century by two arch-rivals , the academic Jose ("Pepe") Herrera C. and the accom­plished amateur Luis E. ("Lucho") Pena C. Pena was better-known outside Chile: he sold specimens of the Chilean entomofauna worldwide and collaborated in the filming of nature documentaries for the BBC and others. He prepared a small pocket gUide to Chilean butterflies that was distributed as a subscription pre­mium by a newspaper in the 1970s. This was later ex­panded into a real book, Las Mariposas de Chile (with coauthor Alfredo J. Ugarte P ), appearing in 1997 (Ed­itorial Universitaria, Santiago) after Pena's death. Even as this work was in preparation, many new species of lycaenids were being discovered by the Is­raeli Dubi Benyamini and others , and described by Kurt fohnson , Zsolt Balint, and Benyamini. These were ~orked into the manuscript. Thus we have an up-to-date and effectively complete reference work available for Chile .

The Argentine situation is much more daunting. The Argentine fauna is perhaps an order of magnitude richer. Unlike Chile, Argentina extends into the humid lowland tropics. Elements of the enormous fauna cen­tered on Amazonia extend through the Argentine northeast and as far south as the subtropical forests of Tucuman. Argentina is a land of great physiographic, climatic and ecological complexity. The lowland tropi­cal fauna articulates with the tropical Andean and alti­plano fauna in the dissected yungas of Salta and Jujuy. In places one can drive from rain forest (selva) tllrough Andean-alpine habitats to mesquite and columnar cac­tus desert in four hours. To the south lie zones of sub­tropical thorn scrub (espinal) , creosote-bush desert (monte), subhumid to subarid bunchgrass prairie (pampa), cool Patagonian desert-steppe (including sOlJthern juniper woodland) and the cool to cold mon-

VOLUME 55, NUMBER 3

tane forests of the Patagonian Andes and southwestern Tierra del Fuego. What a country! Unlike Chilean Patagonia, Argentine Patagonia is relatively dry and sunny, fostering a rich butterfly fauna. And recent studies have revealed tremendous evolutionary dy­namism there and along the steppe-forest ecotone, a veritable "ferment of variability." How to deal with such a fauna?

In 1973 Kenneth Hayward, an Englishman long res­ident in Argentina, published a taxonomic catalogue of the butterflies and skippers of the entire country. It contained hardly any biology, had no range maps or plates, and was rife with errors, but it has had to serve as the foundation of modern Argentine butterfly stud­ies. Hayward was also responsible for an extraordinary four-volume work on Argentine hutterflies, in oversize format with magnificent lithographic plates in the style of Edwards and Scudder. Published between 1948 and 1967 under the pompous series title "Genera et Species Animalium Argentinorum," this rare and pon­derous work was intended to initiate a complete zoo­logical inventory of the country. It represents the acme of Peronist pretension; indeed, Juan Domingo Peron himself patronized the initial volumes. This work does contain some biology, but it is hardly useful as a field guide, nor is it widely or readily accessible even within the country.

Andres EugeniO Varga has undertaken to change the situation for the better. Argentina is an entrepre­neurial country, and in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Miguel, about 30 km from the city center, Varga has opened a Museum of Butterflies of the World display­ing some 70,000 mounted specimens in uniquely-con­structed concave display cases (intended for ease in viewing) under filtered light. There is a biology lab, a rearing facility and a library. The museum-first of its kind in the Southern Cone-is open to guided tours only Monday through Friday, and on a drop-in basis to the general public on Saturdays. It has a support group, the Friends of the Museum, and has initiated its own journal. Meanwhile, Varga has published the first in a projected series of four volumes intended to cover the butterfly fauna of the entire country. U nsur­prisingly, it focuses on the Province of Buenos Aires. Volumes 2 through 4 will cover (in order) "Meso­potamia" (the hun-lid tropical northeast), the pampa and cuyo (the desert-Andean contact zone centered on Mendoza), and Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. He's made a good, if not perfect, start.

Mariposas Argentinas is lavishly produced, in 20 x 28 cm format, with color illustrations on nearly every page. The color reproduction is remarkably true­even capturing the elusive near-UV purple sheen on

]27

the upper surfaces of Colias leshia (p. 27). There is an introductory essay by Varga emphasizing global change and the biodiversity crisis. This is followed by six pages of basic butterfly biology and anatomy and a resume of basic taxonomy (the Linnean hierarchy, binomial nomenclature and the Code-cladistics is not men­tioned). The main part of the book-the species ac­counts, about which more anon-occupies pp. 17-94. This is followed by a very detailed 20-page section on collecting and preserving butterflies. Some may find this material retrograde in emphasis, or at least incon­sistent with the author's conservationist rhetoric. There is a 2-page overview of the Museum and its pro­jects, a 4-page glossary (84 terms), a 7-page bibliogra­phy (118 items), and 2 pages of maps. The bibliogra­phy contains both Argentine and foreign references. Of the former group three were new to me, and one of those-in an obscure agricultural extension venue-is not in Lamas, Robbins and Field's Annotated Bibliog­raphy of the Neotropical Butterflies and Skippers (Sci­entific Publishers, Gainesville, Florida, 1995) although it dates from 1968. Varga has published most of the material other than species accounts previously as freestanding articles in Argentine magazines .

The species accounts cover 171 butterflies and skip­pers, most of which are illustrated. Many show sexual and seasonal dimorphism, and both dorsal and ventral surfaces. The nature of the variation is usually explicit in the captions; an exception is the pierid Tatochila vanvolxemii (p. 25), which has seasonal forms analo­gous to our Pieris napi, but they are not identified as such. In addition to the butterflies, a selection of large and showy moths is presented. The Black Witch rep­resents the N octuidae. There are 14 saturniids, 13 sphingids, and miscellaneous arctiids, pericopids, la­siocampids, ctenuchids, etc.-all common and famil­iar. There are also several pages of photos of represen­tative (again, showy) larvae.

The text accompanying these photos is somewhat disappointing. Frequently it consists merely of a verbal description of what is evident in the photo. (Since the pictures are natural size, this is hardly necessary.) There is little biology, and some of what is given is sus­pect. This is espeCially true of host plant records, which are given without attribution and (as Varga told me) sometimes straight out of Hayward. Opening ran­domly to page 72, I irnmediately saw the familiar fiery Skipper, Hylephila phyleus, which is as much a lawn and garden "weed" in Buenos Aires as in Los Angeles or Houston. Tn B.A. it routinely breeds on (surprise!) Bermuda Grass, Cynodon dactylon ("Pasto Bermuda," "Gramilla Blanca," "Pato de Perdiz") and other lawn grasses and on PaspalU1n ("Pasto Miel," "Cramilla

128

Dulce") and other weedy species. Varga says: "The caterpillars eat grasses, including Sugarcane, Achiras, etc." "Achira" is the Spanish name for Canna, which is not a grass but is a skipper host. I do not know if either Sugarcane or Canna really is a host of H. phyleus, but they are certainly not the most important ones. On the same page is the Argentine Least Skipper, Ancy­loxypha nitidula. No host is specified. In myexperi­ence this species is often intimately associated with the grass Leersia hexandra; at any rate, it should be easy to find out what it eats. One hopes later editions and vol­umes will rely more on information from life and less on antique and questionable published sources.

The taxonomy appears up-to-date and was vetted by profs. Carlos Mielke and Andre Victor Lucci Freitas of Brazil and a local Argentine specialist, Joaquin Carreras.

There are too many typographical errors. Many of the bibliographic citations are incomplete.

Factual errors are rare, but there is one important bit of confusion that appears on p. 17. Under Euryades corethrus (Papilionidael we read: "They are character­ized by two mighty extremities (harpagones) in the posterior part of the abdomen, which the females pos­sess in order to hold on during copulation and prevent new fertilizations." This refers, of course, to the sphragis-a "chastity belt" secreted by the male during copulation, not an integral part of the female . The sphragis of Euryades is indeed "mighty." It is also flam­boyant, bilobed, and-when fresh-bright green (!). What are "harpagones?" In the glossary this Spanish term is given as a synonym of harpes, which are cor­rectly defined as "periphallic moveable processes ... which usually function in subjugating the female dur­ing copulation." The lobes of the sphragis no tienen nada que ver con harpagoncs.

This book is a vast improvement over what was availablc before. It is not cheap. Books have always been expensive in the Southern Cone, despite the fact

JOURNAL OF THE LEPIDOPTER1STS' SOCIETY

that Buenos Aires shares with Mexico City the tradi­tional intellectual leadership of Latin America. Mari­posas Argentinas, the set, will however be indispens­able to any serious student of the butterflies of the region: the later volumes all the more so. The fauna of the Province of Buenos Aires is probably the least in­teresting of the lot, but it has its biogeographical charms. It is mostly derived from the lowland N eotropics. A number of such taxa enter the Province only in the riverine and swamp forests of the Tigre Delta; from the capital south the N eotropical element is very dilute. Endemic austral-Patagonian elements enter in the grasslands. The admixture is well illus­trated by the Satyridae. Two radiations are repre­sented. The euptychiines are lowland-Neotropical. The pronophilines have radiated twice in South America, with one large radiation in the tropical Andes (often associated with bamboos) and the other in the temperate grasslands, extending into alpine steppe and grassland. It is the latter group that reaches its north­ern limit in the littoral in the Province of Buenos Aires. One species, Etcheverrius (=Cosmosatyrus) chilensis, extends from there to far-southern Patagonia, and also occurs widely in Chile. Except for some of the skip­pers, the Buenos Aires fauna is fairly well-known. The same cannot be said for the fauna of any other region. Varga's emphasis on collecting is justified in places where one can still collect three new species in one day (as I once did in Patagonia). He asks on p. 6: "How can we claim to conserve that which we still don't know?" A good question, and this book may stimulate others to get out and learn the Argentine fauna while it is still in place. Otherwise, he says, we will all too soon "lament, as we remember this beautiful world that we had but couldnl take care of."

ARTHUH M. SHAPIRO, Center for Population Biology, UniverSity of Cali fomi a, Davis, California 95616, USA.

Date of Issue (Vol. ,'55, No.3): 26 February 2002